“He never loved me,” said Priscilla, wistfully.  On thinking it over she was not quite sure that she liked being allowed to run away so easily.  Did nobody care, then, what became of her?  Was she of positively no value at all?  Running away is all very well, but your pride demands that those runned from shall at least show some sign of not liking it, make some effort, however humble, to fetch you back.  If they do not, if they remain perfectly quiescent and resigned, not even sending forth a wail that shall be audible, you are naturally extremely crushed.  “My father,” said Priscilla bitterly, “doesn’t care a bit.  He’ll give out I’m dangerously ill, and then you’ll see, Fritzi—­I shall either die, or be sent away for an interminable yachting cruise with the Countess.  And so dust will be thrown in people’s eyes.  My father is very good at that, and the Countess is a perfect genius.  You’ll see.”

But Fritzing never saw, for there was no more mention at all either of Kunitz or of influenza.  And just then he was so much taken up by his efforts to get into the cottages as quickly as possible that after a passing feeling of thankfulness that the Grand Duke should be of such a convenient indifference to his daughter’s fate it dropped from his mind in the easy fashion in which matters of importance always did drop from it.  What was the use, briefly reflected this philosopher, of worrying about what they were or were not thinking at Kunitz?  There would be time enough for that when they actually began to do something.  He felt very safe from Kunitz in the folds of the Somerset hills, and as the days passed calmly by he felt still safer.  But though no dangers seemed to threaten from without there were certain dangers within that made it most desirable for them to get away from Baker’s and into their own little home without a moment’s unnecessary delay.  He could not always be watching his tongue, and he found for instance that it positively refused to call the Princess Ethel.  It had an almost equal objection to addressing her as niece; and it had a most fatal habit of slipping out Grand Ducal Highnesses.  True, at first they mostly talked German together, but the tendency to talk English grew more marked every day; it was in the air they breathed, and they both could talk it so fatally well.  Up at the cottages among the workmen, or when they were joined by Mr. Dawson, grown zealous to help, or by either of the young men Robin and Tussie, who seemed constantly to be passing, the danger too was great.  Fritzing was so conscious of it that he used to break out into perspirations whenever Priscilla was with him in public, and his very perspirations were conspicuous.  The strain made his manner oddly nervous when speaking to or of his niece, and he became the subject of much conjecture to the observant Robin.  Robin thought that in spite of her caressing ways with her uncle the girl must be privately a dreadful tyrant.  It seemed difficult to believe, but Robin